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Monday, October 24, 2016

Minecon2016!

Greetings all!

That's right! A Gamer's Story went to Minecon2016 back at the end of September! I traveled all the way to California through the space-time warping power of YouTube. It was amazing! I'm also a wizard.Mwehehe. But in seriousness, I watched Minecon stream on YouTube for both the opening ceremony as well as the Minecraft 1.11 content reveal. I have never really seen the appeal in conventions. A part of me always thought they would be interesting, but I always thought the massive horde of people would be quite intimidating. Watching the event really made me realize a few important things:

The first is allowing chat on a Minecon streaming video produces a ridiculous amount of spam. I really wish I had some kind of video for it because it was like going 80 mph on the open road and watching trees whoosh by. It was crazy. I yelled at people to use their inside voices. Those darn kids. Eventually, the chat got disabled because it was just too much, which is totally fine with me because I didn't really like seeing "gay" in large orange letters against a bight blue background anyway. It was mostly chat spam, but some people used large colored text and that was one of the things that kept popping up. The other was creeper faces! Totes adorbs!

The second is... that's it. Yup. No chat on major event streaming videos. People are crazy. Did you know they are all over the planet?! Wow. Life is frightening. But once again in seriousness, it was just so freaking cool to watch. I kind of stumbled upon it as the time counted down from three minutes. I could feel the anticipation, and I could only imagine how cool it must have been to have actually watched it for the people who were there. The opening skit was a little lame, but it was also such a visceral experience for the kids. It made me remember that the game has huge following of the childrens, and I found it really sweet that the skit appealed to them instead of focusing everything on the adults. I often find it hard to understand the minds of children, and so I treat them like adults.

Then there was such a huge response from the crowd once the main presenter came on that it kind of hit me how universal Minecraft is. Minecraft is for everyone.All age groups love it. People had such wild enthusiasm. There was such an awesome, excited vibe about the entire thing. I realized that I want to be there next year. I need to go to Minecon in person. I have no idea what the heck I'd do, but I would love to be there and just see all these excited people in person. I'd like to experience some of the excitement myself. Minecon 2017, here I come!

On the next day, I once again stumbled upon the reveal for the latest Minecraft update, 1.11: the Exploration Update. I had to back it up about twenty minutes because I came across the livestream late, but I watched the entire thing! It was so exciting! There are many awesome new things headed our way, and for the first time I saw an advantage in playing Minecraft in single player instead over a multiplayer server. It has me so ridiculously excited. I WANT to play in single player. That blows my mind. Ever since I discovered multiplayer servers, playing by myself always seemed a little boring. I played many hours by my lonesome before I discovered SMP (survival multiplayer) but there was a certain emptiness in not being able to communicate with other people or show them the rad Raaaad maaaan things I built. Now I feel there's a certain edge, specifically exploration maps, that makes me feel okay with being on my lonesome. On a server, I anticipate people competing for the maps, but in single player, or perhaps on a realms map with a friend or two, I can explore on my own without feeling like I'm missing out on a cool part of the game due to others. I really can't wait.

This gives me the itch to start uploading YouTube videos again and to show off these splendid adventures. While I think I would enjoy it, I have three birds in my room and their squawks and chirps can make it difficult to record. I can't do it whenever I want. I also want to step it up and have more active blog. I am a unique individual with unique things to say, and I think I should take the time to say them! There's also so much to write about. Together, I hope we can grow to become... decent sized. I've never wanted to be big or famous because that's waaaay too much pressure. I don't mind being decent, and also decent-sized. Maybe you can be decent too!

Watching Minecon 2016 changed a lot for me. It changed how I looked at a few different things. I know it's kind of weird to see an event on livestream and think of it as a "life-changing" experience, but really, when it comes to life, always use any opportunity you can to learn more about yourself. Too many people let life pass them by without any real reflection on what it means to them or think about who they are. Don't be one of those people. Don't be like Random Chad. Random Chad is a person I just made up, but jeez, is he awful. Don't be him. I mean it. I'm looking forward to many new things in the future.